


A Rose By Any Other Name

by throgmorten



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24358726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throgmorten/pseuds/throgmorten
Summary: Willas asks Sansa to name their babe.
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Willas Tyrell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 83





	A Rose By Any Other Name

Willas wakes at what he thinks must be the hour of the wolf, with a terrible ache in his leg, to the softest of humming.

“Sorry, did we wake you?”

“No, my leg I think,” he says, turning fully onto his side and kissing the downy red fuzz on his daughter's head. Sansa refuses to hand their daughter to a wet nurse, let alone leave her to sleep all by herself in the nursery. Luckily it would take more than a fussy babe ( _his babe_ ) waking him in the middle of the night to upset Willas. He only minds at all because he wishes Sansa to get more rest – he knows, even though it is masked by the low light emanating from the fire Sansa must have stoked, that she is deathly pale still, the only colour her skin can muster the dark circles under eyes – and so thin, much thinner than any nursing mother should be. Still, he cannot deny her this, and so his only condition is that if the midwives or maester tell her to stop she will.

“Did you decide on a name yet?”

Willas refuses to regret telling Sansa to pick the name, even though he can't think of a worse moniker than Catelyn Tyrell – a name that at best will remind Sansa of the gaping hole of her mother's absence, at worst the grisly facts of her ignominious death. He hopes it's a long time before Cate asks what happened to the grandmother that is her namesake.

“I was thinking Florence, for Florence Fossoway?” Willas ducks his head and grins – one of the better of his forebears, Florence's Tyrell husband was made Master of Coin on the understanding his wife would be the one actually doing the job. _Florence Tyrell._ He loves it – it had not occurred to Willas that Sansa, for all she had read extensively on the histories of the Reach and House Tyrell, would choose a name from there. He feels terrible, like he underestimated Sansa somehow.

“What made you pick it? Is this your way of telling me you'd like me to make you more gold?”

Sansa gives him a soft smirk before looking back down at their perfect tiny daughter asleep in her arms. Her smile dims a bit.

“No I.... I want her to be smart...”

It hits Willas like a punch in the gut. They've been married long enough now that he hears what she's not saying - '…. _smarter than me'._ He rues every negative thought he had about the burden of being Catelyn Tyrell – better a sad name than one borne from the hatred Sansa bears herself. Willas grasps Sansa's hand to place a kiss on the back of it. He feels wholly inadequate.

“She'll be like her mother then.”


End file.
